Will a solid-state disk speed up editing?

berndintokyo

Newbie Joined: Nov 20, 2015 22:20 Messages: 23 Offline

Solved by

Mar 13, 2017 21:35

I am new to PowerDirector. My goal is to edit AVCHD files smoothly without using shadow files. My computer is an HP workstation with a rather powerful Xeon processor, 32GB of memory and a spinning disk. The graphics card that came with this box is so outdated that its benchmark rating is weaker than the built-in graphics of my mainstream Thinkpad.

It turns out that editing is not as smooth as I want it. TaskManager and ResourceMonitor revealed that the CPU was mostly bored at 12% usage, memory not really used much, but at regular intervals there were large disk access rates in the vicinity of 40MB/sec, as if PD was prereading large file chunks.

So, if I believe these performance measurements, memory or graphic card upgrades don't seem to be the right strategy for improving the editing experience (I don't know if I can upgrade the CPU and have no plan to do that for now).

I am therefore thinking to add an SSD, but how can I convince PD to use it? I am also confused by conflicting opinions in this forum, e.g. "there is no noticeable increase in speed in video editing" in this thread. Therefore, I would be grateful for advice how to make my editing more enjoyable. Thinkpad E540, 16GB memory, Core i3 4000M
HP workstation Z420, Xeon E5-1620, 32GB, Quadro 600

Carl312

Senior Contributor Location: Texas, USA Joined: Mar 16, 2010 20:11 Messages: 9090 Offline

Mar 13, 2017 22:19

Quote I am new to PowerDirector. My goal is to edit AVCHD files smoothly without using shadow files. My computer is an HP workstation with a rather powerful Xeon processor, 32GB of memory and a spinning disk. The graphics card that came with this box is so outdated that its benchmark rating is weaker than the built-in graphics of my mainstream Thinkpad.

It turns out that editing is not as smooth as I want it. TaskManager and ResourceMonitor revealed that the CPU was mostly bored at 12% usage, memory not really used much, but at regular intervals there were large disk access rates in the vicinity of 40MB/sec, as if PD was prereading large file chunks.

So, if I believe these performance measurements, memory or graphic card upgrades don't seem to be the right strategy for improving the editing experience (I don't know if I can upgrade the CPU and have no plan to do that for now).

I am therefore thinking to add an SSD, but how can I convince PD to use it? I am also confused by conflicting opinions in this forum, e.g. "there is no noticeable increase in speed in video editing" in this thread. Therefore, I would be grateful for advice how to make my editing more enjoyable.

I can tell you that a SSD will in general speed up your computer, in that Windows loads maybe 10 times faster that it did from a Hard drive.

But Editing in Powerdirector will not be speeded up. The reason is the in/out processing is just not that fast. I would say there is no or little speed increase with a SSD drive.

The one component you can have is a super fast CPU to speed up Powerdirector.

As to how much RAM, CPU use, and Graphics use, depends on what you are actually demanding in your Edits.

Under the right conditiions, PD will use all RAM and All of the CPU. Maybe a good chunk of the GPU. I have seen PD using 100% CPU many times on rendering a HD video.

. Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

the King

Senior Member Joined: Jun 30, 2010 04:10 Messages: 296 Offline

Mar 14, 2017 02:19

It only helps for seeking big file and generating continous thumbnails on timeline, but it generally speed up your computer as Carl says.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Mar 14. 2017 02:19

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PepsiMan

Senior Contributor Location: Clarksville, TN Joined: Dec 29, 2010 01:20 Messages: 1054 Offline

Mar 14, 2017 12:58

welcome back.

Quote ...It turns out that editing is not as smooth as I want it.. .

if i may read between the lines then you don't want to have slow downs, skips, pauses, etc while editing with PD and the

hardware that you have...

in my experience, it isn't the hardware, if you have the right stuff, rather it's source video bitrate!

PD's preview slows down a bit at 50+Mb/sec bitrate...

Quote ...
I am therefore thinking to add an SSD, ...

"there is no noticeable increase in speed in video editing" ...

since i am the major bottleneck in editing, today's SATAIII SSD or NVMe M.2 is more reliable so it gave me about

-10% in RENDERING the final videos. only advantage is just load the programs faster.

-> http://www.ebay.com/itm/Samsung-850-EVO-500GB-2-5-Inch-SATA-III-Internal-SSD-MZ-75E500B-AM-NEW-/252812879009?hash=item3adcd264a1:g:-zgAAOSwzaJX2NAT

so is the WD Re/Gold WD1004FBYZ HDD ->

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Western-Digital-Re-WD1004FBYZ-1TB-7200RPM-SATA3-SATA-6-0-GB-s-128MB-Hard-Drive-/172553007303?hash=item282cf5f0c7:g:CboAAOSwtfhYtINK

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Western-Digital-HDD-WD2005FBYZ-2TB-SATA-6Gb-s-7200RPM-128MB-3-5inch-WD-Gold-Reta-/272555912327?hash=item3f75992c87:g:hH4AAOSw2gxYoeVG

you can put your cpu and gpu at the http://www.cpubenchmark.net/ to get your scores...

it is based on gaming but in video rendering, higher the number better.

only thing that i'd like to recommend, if your pc can accomodate, is upgrading your GPU to GTX 1050Ti.

GTX 1050Ti uses the power from the PCIe slot its sitting on.

happy happy joy joy

PepsiMan

'garbage in garbage out'

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Mar 14. 2017 13:04

'no bridge too far'

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tomasc

Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 25, 2011 12:33 Messages: 6464 Offline

Mar 14, 2017 16:36

The ssd drive will not help with video editing in general to speed up producing a file.

berndintokyo

Newbie Joined: Nov 20, 2015 22:20 Messages: 23 Offline

Mar 14, 2017 23:28

Thanks all. So the overwhelming consensus is that there is no use in getting an SSD. I found the remark about the source bitrate interesting; in my case it's AVCHD with a bitrate of 13.68Mbps. Probably middle of the road. Thinkpad E540, 16GB memory, Core i3 4000M
HP workstation Z420, Xeon E5-1620, 32GB, Quadro 600